the more time i spent on my last blog entry, the more it became apparent i wanted to ask this question and see the comments to this blog, and inevitable commentary around the blogosphere and in traditional digital and analog media..
even a year ago, this would have seemed like a preposterous question.
Given the admitted rush job by Randall Stross for the Sunday NY Times Business column that I discussed in my last blog entry, along with my previous experiences with that paper, i dont think it is preposterous any longer.
Who has higher editorial and reporting standards. Your typical fulltime blogger, or the NY Times ?
Who puts more effort into researching their articles ?
Who conveys more depth ?
The NY Times is obviously feeling some financial pain and cutting back. Costs impact the amount of space they can provide for any article, or for all content as a whole. Bloggers do not have that limitation. I can write as many pages as i like.
The NY Times is limited by deadlines. They have to get to print and get the product out the door. Bloggers do not.
Costs and deadlines limit the amount of resources that can be applied to any given article for both bloggers and the NY Times. Who is more constrained as a result ?
The NY Times certainly has more feet on the street than any given blog, so should they do a better job of breaking news than a specific blog ? Or are there more blogger feet on the streeten total throughout the blogger universe for any given topic ?
Can a reader get a better understanding of the topics of the day, week, month in a given area by trusting the NY Times to present the news, or is it better ot do a search of news sources and the blogosphere for keywords, topics and tags on Icerocket.com and become your own aggregator on an ajax homepage like netvibes.com, goowy.com, my.yahoo , google.com or any other personal aggregation environment ?
Do my experiences reflect a bigger problem that newspapers like the NY Times are having, resulting in some of the financial hardships they are experiencing ? Or is it specific to the NY Times and at least their Sunday Business Section standards have fallen ? Or were my two experiences simply coincedence, and every other article in any given weekend is meticulous in research and execution ?
Given the comments that will be offered arent limited to those who write blogs, anyone from the newspaper industry can add their thoughts, im looking forward to reading the comments.